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Education Brained 



or 

Education from the Stand- 
point of the Brain 
and Brain- 
Cells 







'j£f£,Y7 



Education Brained 

or i^t 

Education from the Standpoint of the Brain 
and Brain-Cells 



By Philip H. Erbes 

Graduate Illinois State Normal University, Normal. Illinois 

Author of 

'' Cranio-Muscular Origins of Brain 

and Mind," etc. 



From the simple condensation of human experience 
7ve derive a fhilosofihy better than theories, and al- 
zvays Tjuithin one's reach. — Carl Hilty, Berne. 

7 he race has too far forgotten hozv it ivas really 
developed, and tifon zvkat its physical {and mental) 
xuell-heing de-peyids. — Cranio-Muscular Origins of 
Brain and Mind. 



Id I OSS 

Copyright, 1905, by Philip H. Erbes ,£fc 



LiBSAHYof OONtaStsS 
fwo Uopiss rieceiveu 




FES 16 1905 

/O9330 : 
COPY B. 1 





By the same Author: 

The Cranial Muscles as Determinants of the 
Cerebral Areas 

Paper 25 cents 

Cranio-Muscular Origins of Brain and Mind 

Illustrated 
Cloth, $1.20, net Postage, 10 cents 



THE PROMETHEAN PUBLISHING CO. 
622 N. Rockwell St. , Chicago, III 



To the Educator and Self-Educator 
who desires to make application of the 
new scientific discoveries concerning 
man for the evolutiiDn and betterment 
of mind and man. 





Fig. II. 

CORTICAL LOCALIZATION. (FERRIER, ETC.) MONKEV's BRAIN UNDER ELECTRICAL 
STIMULATION. 

Nucleus i'. Movements of feet of hind limbs. 

N. I. Advance of hind limbs, as in walking. 

N. 2. Complex movements of hind limbs and adapted movements of 
trunk; foot toward center line of trunk. 

N. 3. Tail. 

N. 4. Contractive movements of arms. 

N. 5. Extensor movements of arms. 

N. 6. Extensor movements of forearms. 

N. a, b, c, d. Prehensive movements of hands. 

N. 7. Retraction of zygomatic muscles. 

N. 8. Elevation of wings of nose and angle of upper lip. 

N. 9 and 10. Movements of mouth and tongue. 

N. II. Simple movements of mouth. 

N. 12, Eyes open; pupils dilate. 

N. 13. Eyes move; pupils contract; concomitant movements of head. 

N. 14. Pricking of ears. Concomitant dilation of pupils of eyes and 
movements of head. 

N. 15. Torsions of lips and nose of same side. The foregoing move- 
ments take place on opposite side of body, but those of the eyes are 
complex. 

N. 16. Movements of parts of mouth; as if affected by a stimulus. 

N. 17. Pelvic. 



(Cut taken from the "Brain and Mind" Book.) 



Education Brained 



Persisting from the primitive age of man to the present day 
there are several appalling facts — made evident by recent scien- 
tific discoveries — the issues of a leading theory of the nature of 
man, that have impelled me to write this pamphlet and to send it 
out into the civilized world. My hope is that it will do some- 
thing toward arousing a movement to set education aright riidi- 
mentally. Basal natural principles make methods intelligent. 
They always count for more than any method, and their impor- 
tance increases relatively to their derivation from reality and to 
their adherence to the utilitarian side of conduct right here on 
mother earth. 

The first folly of conduct and of the education in vogue is 
that they misuse, abuse and overuse — finally degenerate the in- 
herited evolutionally sifted human body, brain and mind. This 
they do as much, and more because of the very fact of civilization 
and its intense activity, as any dark age or tabooed spiritual 
fanaticism ever did. They lead their victims up a pinnacle of 
brilliancy from whence to hurl them into an abyss. Or again, we 
are going the way of the Babylonians and Romans. Savants in 
despair have reasoned that this must be so; that nations must 
have their life and death. It must not be so. Religion even 
encourages this self-annihilation and looks to a Future for a 
reward. This is a senseless, unredeeming sacrifice. If it is not 
that we are destroyed by a radical change in our environment of 
earth and nature, then it is because brains concoct and put into 
force a fantastical institutional environment which kills; an en- 
vironment which it is impossible for the race to adapt itself to 
and live on in under the form of an animal — human animal. The 
human body is a mechanism constructed of flesh and blood. 
Through this intricate mechanism mind, a neutral energy, and 



tabula rasa in this sense, operates, and there exists no reason, 
natural or of higher authority, on earth or in the heavens above, 
why culture — which is supposed to bring about a scientific building 
up and improvement of this mechanism and mind — should cripple 
and destroy them. While it is true that the advance of education 
and the race consists in substituting better for bad emotion, activ- 
ity and knowledge, it is more important that the brain expands 
for the holding of additional power and knowledge, a point on 
which fossil skulls alone bear me out. But how is this expansion 
and evolution, into which the body and its members also enter, to 
come about if one people after another exterminates itself and the 
process must be begun over and over again upon a barbaric soil? 
When with Hindu affrontery you gloat poetically over vour 
work : 

'Thy rafters I have broken low 
I've felled in ruins the ridgepole too?" 

Secondly, since the naive, staid method of by-gone centuries 
has been deserted and new, wild theories have been brought into 
play in our schools, there has grown up a generation of humanity 
in our land, and not there alone, nor on this account alone, who 
are almost completely lacking in depth or force. From one day 
to another, following a leader shrouded in a blanket of paper, 
they yield to a subtile, fickle mob-spirit. Themselves they possess 
neither original, individual thinking efficacy, character or the will 
to become a ruling power of any sort. It is the uneducated, 
naturally developed — a few college men excepted — those who 
have learned from existent facts and conditions, who conduct the 
greatest part of our affairs and save us from an epoch of general 
weary willyism. They are the nearer to the soil, rough-cut though 
they are, and from the soil and those who work all movements 
and revolutions for the better always come. The great reform- 
ers always get back toward the soil. Moreover, these men in 
power openly boast of excluding the impotently subservient 
school and college element as unfit. They prey upon the public, 



as anyone may easily verify for himself, averaging up its com- 
ponents as half-grown youths. The correctness of their conclu- 
sions is proven by their full pockets and by the empty pockets and 
stomachs of their credulous dupes. Nor need they resort to rob- 
ber-baron force in carrying out their campaign. But there are 
degrees of naturalness, and I am not saying that it is either the 
one or the other of these two predominant present-day elements 
that will control the future. It will be a nobler, cultured element, 
if such can be made out of the given raw human product, and I 
believe it can. 

Thirdly, I am supported in my contentions and conclusions 
by naturalists, physiologists, and by alienists particularly. These 
men at least recognize and take into account the natural nature 
of man and fearlessly strive to live up to the facts ; as a conse- 
quence they vie with nature herself in the results they obtain. 
The present increase of physical, neural and mental frailty and 
disorders is due to a blind system of racking flesh and battering 
brains. I shall try to go into these details a little farther than 
any one before me has done, and nail a few theses upon the uni- 
versity doors of educators, who too often, in view of their posi- 
tion, proudly display the most arrogant conservatism and bigotry. 

Facultized Abstract Mind 

The first point I shall dwell upon is that whereon the whole 
matter turns; it is the cardinal error, blunder of education and 
conduct. The educational system and conduct of life is based 
upon a mythical assumption which has been endured all too long. 
This assumption is that mind is a facultized entity free of the 
body ; that this mind is all-capacioiis and should be crammed and 
kept going as long as the owner can wriggle under the lash of 
whip, tongue or will. Given this proposition, considered essential 
for the preservation of human dignity, the problem is with more or 
less unsentient consistency worked out in practice. Moreover, 
this false educational principle is annually given new impetus by 
gravely written educational books, into which are kneaded some 
of the discoveries of science in the same unassimilative manner 



8 

as gold nuggets would' be kneaded into mud pies by a child. The 
theory is so dear to the heart that all conditions of men cry for it. 
Supposing it is false, who yet would lose it and lose with it the 
mystery and joy of life? What an infantile, unvolitional reason 
and whine this is. Would you be back at the level of a child or 
Greek again? There is no absolute golden mean. You know 
very well that the creature of the higher organization and mental 
level is the better ofif. You know very well that ignorance is 
productive of misery, and you remain at a level of ignorance, what 
though you do not stop to realize it. Why is the earth filled with 
the weakly, the silly, with nervous wrecks and the crack-brained ; 
and the graveyards filled with the untimely dead? Lay it to 
heredity if you will, but know this that your heirs are going to 
be a still more pitiable and a more fearful reproach to you. Hug 
the phantom children of your imagination and . immolate the 
children of flesh, blood and hearts ! But has anyone ever told you 
and made you comprehend that imagination is the initial, more 
or less abortive, vagrant, activity of brain cells, single and in asso- 
ciation ; a hybrid of fact and fable ? 

Mind Chained to Brains 

According to the reigning theory, as I have said, there is 
no recognized limit to mental capacity, while brains and body are 
naively abused, like cart-horses in the hands of a brutal driver. 
W^hat is this but a mode of theosophy which makes such effront- 
ing assertions as that what has once passed through the mind is 
never again forgotten ; that all minds, as they manifest themselves 
through brains and flesh, are alike? Minds are not alike. It is 
mind-energy that is homogeneous, if anything is, even as is the 
case with any other force. For the mind, brains and body act as a 
device, and its manifestations vary with the size, form and quality 
of that device. This is the only reliable, workable hypothesis you 
have to go by. It is the only one which yields you anything 
tangible to proceed from and refer to, as your secular mission 
demands. It is only one which will put an end to mind-energy 
sporting with you, so to say. 



Theory and Practice 

The practical teachings interspersed through the old psycholo- 
gies contradict their own theories. The theories are contradicted 
by the common-sense sayings and doings of life ; and no presump- 
tion ever outlived common sense and fact. True, introspection 
and psychology both have seen much that is sound, but they have 
not been able to verify at all points and to take that stand upon 
a known footing which is as firm as that of the rocks and elements 
of the universe. Man has always constructed a mythical fabric 
for himself, and probably always will so long as there remains a 
brain frontier. This he does to explain the unknown, but what 
he actually knew he embodied in the forms of life — that was the 
substantial rational element which operated for his evolution, or- 
ganic and institutional ; it was that which enabled him to survive. 
Thus the golden age was never the present age. His myths led 
him toward the discovery of reality, but never did a myth con- 
tribute further to his welfare when he persisted in clinging to it 
for the mere love of the thing ; it leads the broad way ; emotions 
are good but they are likewise hurtful, for the reason that they 
are purely personal factors. With actual discovery the progres- 
sive peoples have always forsaken the earlier fantastical fabric to 
become scientific; exact — with greater, more comprehensive 
emotions. 

The Fit and The Unfit 

Mere intellectual theorizing is of course, as far as dynamic 
morality goes, more or less harmless, passive ; it does not get out 
of the frontal cavity of the brain-pan ; it is much on a par with 
puerile emotion, — but all outward activity which is erratic and 
not in conformity with the conditions and laws of nature and 
reality, obtains the reward of the ignoramus in physics anywhere. 
Sooner or later it will go the way of the unfit. Against the mill- 
stones of Nature man is a mite. It is the fit in this guise who 
survive, simply because they are allied with nature and have 
nature as their ally. In this way it is that the fit are the final 
survivors. Man is not an exceptional phenomenon upon this 



10 

earth. Can 3'ou b^* any maimer of reasoning make tbat action 
moral or aught but both homicidal and suicidal, which superim- 
poses an inieasible hypothesis upon reahrv" or which sets aside 
an}- phase of realhy for such an hypothesis, especially when the 
facts are at hand and the brain is of size enou^ and culture 
enough tc» grasp them? Your mind-gods will no more come to 
your aid, nor can they be approached for aid. than could the idols 
images and fetiches of old. God helps those that help themselves. 

Some Details Concerning Brains and Personality 

cause of my stand for a natural intelligence, his attitude itself 
furnishes proof of one of three things. He is imder the thumb 
of rtTannic authority ; he is internally compelled to remain con- 
sistent with some theory- which is fixed in his brain, yea forms 
a ruling part of his personality-. Or he has become an automaton 
of flesh — ^above all if he has attained full gro-w-th. when then an 
overwhelming number of brain cells have been taken up with 
particular artificial memories which will not be dislodged to give 
place to new- and true ones : the currents from these cells resulting 
in what const i t u te his prejudiced opinions and ways. His mental 
chamber resembles the interior of the later Byzantine palaces, 
where God. nature and man was put to mockerv-. Few of ad- 
^-anced years have courageously warded off the latter predica- 
ment, or are disposed to ward it off, and therefore it is that I 
must appeal to the plastic younger generation to make the best 
of themselves by acquiring reliable memories while it is yet time, 
before the brain has cn'^tallized in all its cells. Reformers begin 
with the young always, or else in troublesome times when discon- 
tent prev^ents brains from becoming settled. For the same 
reason, but not of necessity', genius is ignored in its own countn 
and day. For the same reason times of peace are times of stag- 
nation among those who possess no ambition above that of exist- 
ing and living on in ignorant bliss. A free truth-seeking mind 
is a thing entirely out of question in the case of a routine, pre- 
cocious brain, and such a brain is also as readable as a boc4c. Free 



11 

mmd is 211 EQasioii widi rt^ bat in. rllnsDQti wiiicfi cannot be seen: 
becanse of tise brain Ifmitatmns to windi I have called atTPTrrrnn- 
K tiss cooditiGtt af :t ( T- ^ \r K. tainga as tmcfer die control of an 
inEperioos inner antboritr. joti cannot change matDers any by dt- 
nyii^ it or by transferring- antfrority dsewisere. It is t&e better 
andBorily and can be trained to- a ratioaal IcoiaKT. It is more- 
over, a heritage, and snppoang it conld be 1 fii iii|^ii il iar some- 
tfano^ c!se, do not presmrre to accomplish ida^ in yoor bri^ spsn 
of Hf e. Yon do well if yon add one sssg^ new and belter cdl to 
stay. AgaiBjt yim loay aitifffnit. to stem dbe tide €if Iftc amr eds- 
nd c wiutiu M jo^ to please yoor seffiisfr seSf, to 11 11 ifw 
jmr omtionsy but yon caoiBQt stem tbe msm ai dhe 
I in iirtib ^I'Jj I'm 1 1 111 J -. wbest 

to dBt airi liBcl not die tr ^ feet, to 

Iftc nxfcs <rf 



The Fneedom and Moo-Freedom of Brain 

Mind 



• - ■ -e 

Yon km 

er body. 

^: ^-- ■■■■r rfnps. of tbe 

. ^ of the spinal coed ex* bfjr lAose 

..... ceQfcsaBdIfe 

.-^ -. • ■"•^ -f^^^rfr c?t 

are esr t of a 

L «k sOiL "1— 



that a i:-. :':± is ot 



savmgrs. 



12 

to making associative application of the discoveries of others as 
has not been done in a popular work heretofore. But in health 
these interconnections impress themselves less, save to the alert 
observant eye. We fail to note them, even as we fail to note 
our inner normal sensations. An}' irregularities of limbs we are 
prone to set down as awkwardness and do not in the least sus- 
pect the reign of the spinal cord and brain in their retreat ; we 
suspect no defects or perfections there ; yet of body, brain and 
mind the one grows or wastes away parallelly to the other. In 
education it is not a question entirely of training them but also 
of grozving them, of making them. 

Brain and Brain-Cells 

Every mass of gray cells and every gray and white cell in 
that mass is connected with a physical or a sense-organ by means 
of specific fibers. The neural cells are also connected with one 
another in various ways. A microscopic expert could tell the 
structures of the different limbs and sense-organs from an ex- 
amination of the cells and nuclei of the cerebro-spinal tract, or 
vice versa, in the same manner that a naturalist can reconstruct 
a creature from a tooth or a toe-nail. The brain itself but con- 
stitutes a reduplication, reinforcement of the spinal cord. A 
subtler expert could make the same reconstructions from mental 
data. 

But when we now come to deal with the mass of the brain we 
are upon a construction whose millions of cells and their effects, 
individual and associative, are indeed sufficient to dumfound and 
give ignorance sufficient cause to posit a mind having infinite 
capacity and independent of matter. If all minds are cast to- 
gether to form a sort of composite mind, the shallow theory 
receives further support. As a theory that impression served to 
give a starting-point before men knew the physical facts. The 
expedient was as excusable as any hypothesis of science ; but 
like all myths it has served its time. The capacity of mind is un- 
doubtedly infinite but not in the sense it is taken to be, not in the 
receptacle of the body. Yet presuming that any one person of an 



13 

ordinary sized brain made it a point of his life to know the office 
of every brain cell of any other person and then also know the 
associative effects of these cells, his brain and mind would be 
more than completely taken up in the effort. He could and would 
know absolutely nothing else. He would come to be a man unin- 
telligible among other men — and yet there is talk of speaking to 
the men of Mars. Fortunate would he be if he were not adjudged 
a lunatic, and yet his predicament is no whit different than that 
of one whose brains are crammed with the details, intellectual or 
emotional, of the neighborhood gossip or with details remote from 
actual human welfare and happiness. When there is a question of 
actual insanity, the routine beings conforming to the prevail- 
ing order of life, are the last to become so afflicted. The even- 
ness of their way is similar to that of the dumb ever sane brute 
whose memories are fixed. 

The Practical and The Qeneral in Brain 
Economy 

In view of the foregoing facts it is impossible for a man to 
know himself completely, to say nothing of knowing the Creator 
and getting impatient and skeptical because he will not reveal 
Himself. You poor deluded beings, you must first expand your 
brains to the calibre necessary for knowing Him in detail. How 
little can you know of your own self ; how little of creation ! The 
moral is, be content to acquire a generalized knowledge, as long 
as you are what you are physically. Know laws and principles. 
By the use of a few brain cells, for instance, you can learn the law 
of gravitation and then also be able to say how every molecule 
upon the earth and in the universe is affected by that law; and 
yet you need not know every molecule. That is brain economy 
and that is what enables some men to do marvelous feats in con- 
struction. That is what makes gods. Brain cell effects, or 
knowledge, once in our possession tend, owing to the nature of 
the organic matter we are built of, to cleave to us, and therefore 
it is imperative that we exercise discretion in letting mental effects 
fasten themselves upon us. We must overlook and forget details 



14 
purposely and scientifically, and subsume them under notions and 
insight. Learning has its negative and its positive side. Em- 
pirically it has often been asserted that we must learn how to 
forget. Here it again is evident that we must learn laws and not 
particulars, nor again, to make particulars of laws. All laws at 
least endure though details and men pass away. Then, too, 
when a brain is over-filled with gray memory cells, these en- 
croach into the space which should be taken up by the white 
associative fibres. We all know that a man of mere learning is 
not much better than an encyclopedia, and this is true because he 
cannot possibly make associative use of his store of isolated facts. 

You 

There are still many of you who do not understand these 
assertions and the actual nature of man. This I know to be true 
from the very structures of your brains and nervous systems. 
Moreover, if you are not going to take the time or determine 
to grow new cells or to rout old worthless memories to make 
place for true ones or for new ones in old cells, I might as well 
talk to crustaceans. You are not altogether to blame for your 
plight. The past and the present working together have fixed you 
between them. It pulls at your heart-strings, when you do at- 
tempt to rise to the height of overcoming your neural inertia, to 
oust what has become a part of your personality. You have lived 
and kept your brain busy accumulating the mental store your 
fellows do, and have come to love it. If you did aspire higher 
than they, you did so by your lonely self. If you let your brain 
lie fallow, simply refusing to accept the artificial views of life, 
and have yet not investigated nature of your own initiation, there 
is plenty of room in your skull to admit of the culture of new 
brain cells to take the place of the present inert filling-in material. 
Many a one has suddenly waked up after thirty or forty years of 
his age. 



15 

The Psychical Office of Neural Ceils 

The original neural cell is possessed of a neutral sensitiveness. 
It responds in the same way to all stimuli. Although there is 
strong evidence to show that its character in any position remains 
neutral and that the diversity of response is all due to the differ- 
ence in the physical fibres and organs through which it acts, we 
are for the present safe in maintaining that through repeated con- 
tact each cell gains an affinity for a particular stimulus ; that 
attractive stimulus being the one with which it comes most fre- 
quently and constantly in contact. All the psychological laws of 
perception, memory, attention and so on also apply to the function 
of the gray cell. From this it is easy to see that there is some- 
thing deeper than mind faculties to take into account, and to see 
what follows, whilst we remain on tangible ground and detect 
fallacious speculative assertions and methods, nor run into blind 
alleys. 

The Cell and Theoretical Psychology 

For example, it is not true that education should confine itself 
to and impart knowledge by either written or spoken word alone, 
or through any one of the other senses or avenues isolately. In- 
tellect constitutes but a narrow range of brain and mental activity 
and to train it alone and through some avenues only, and then 
also fail to set it into outward motory action, is mere horse-play. 

It is not true that emotion is the only phase of mind pro- 
ductive of prejudice. There is also a prejudice of intellect and of 
motory action. 

To educate by keeping up a current of pleasurable feeling in 
the learner is simply to play upon what he knows and nothing 
more. 

Naming is hut a gesture language taking place in the mouth. 

Imagination purely is valueless for life, and pernicious. 

Abstraction, to a well-developed brain, is no more difficult 
than observation, if it is gotten at in the right way and time is 
allowed for it to take place. 



Artificial memories introduced to aid essential memories but 
press a third cell into service and thus limit the final range of 
memory. In this manner speculative psychology is arraigned in 
every phase. 

Memory, Its Fundamental Import 

At the base of all mentality, of all mental processes and re- 
sponses, lies the process of memory. The highest memory is that 
of selfconsciousness. Imagination, reason, all phenomena of 
mind depend upon memory. In the case of reason memory is 
derived from lower cell impressions and not from the outer source 
directly, it results from secondary and tertiary currents. The en- 
durance of a memory is increased by repetition ; the memories 
oldest in one's life are therefore the firmest. Thus may all the 
various characteristics of memory, and character, be explained. 

At this point we are again confronted by the fact, which will 
not be downed when once you see to bed-rock, that the capacity 
of brain and mind is limited because of the limitation of the num- 
ber of brain cells. You become more and more convinced that 
the present system of education is a failure because it starts from 
a wrong premise ; that the more you educate, the sadder is the 
turmoil and havoc you create ; that a prolonged education com- 
pletely unfits the individual for the tasks of life, — for though 
stress is mainly laid upon the intellect the prolongation of the 
stress finally unmans all the rest of the brain, and the organism 
correspondingly. I have still other things to mention, but this 
much will show that there exists an undercurrent of good cause 
why some educators beheadedly fly to this and to that resort, 
guided by impulse rather than reason — anything seems better 
than the old way, and thus young brains are harrowed and 
harassed, the process, like that of medieval torture, being intensi- 
fied in proportion as it becomes harder to get results. Just before 
writing this paper, I read these words in an article by President 
John H. Finley. 'T do have many doubts about the wisdom of 
our methods. I cannot doubt the wisdom, especially in a democ- 
racy, of trying to give one generation the benefit of the experi- 



17 

ence of the generations that have gone before." I say that the 
wisdom of the past must also be culled judiciously, for there re- 
mains much wisdom yet to discover, and there must be kept a 
brain reserve to grasp and hold the new — much of which is 
gained by means subservient to and over and above the sense- 
organs; and all this because the brain expands and evolves too 
slowly to permit a doubling of its content zvithin a generation. 
We cannot afford to learn "the superstitions of two thousand 
years ago" in detail, and not because of a lack of time only. 

It was Theodosius, I believe, who said that pedagogs take the 
spirits out of the youth. He needed warriors, and yet the old 
Goth's words are full of significance, in different ways, for the 
tyrant and the freeman of to-day. 

Education 

Education there must be. The brain will not stock itself. It 
is a social product. It tends to move along lines of least resist- 
ance in spite of the presence of sense-organs. Like all other 
products of evolution it needs some forcing to grow against re- 
sistance. The most fortunate thing for a human being is that the 
brain is not fully developed at birth. This very fact prevents the 
inheritance of a brain stock. Inherited memories are hardest of 
all to eradicate and change. Late maturity is what gives human 
beings an advantage above that of most brutes, in that they can 
build up a brain and mind adapted to the particular environment 
and to that phase of environment for whose discovery inventions 
and reason are necessary. It gives nature and teachers an op- 
portunity to predetermine the memories that are to be implanted 
to stay, and to show and even force what superimposed memo- 
ries and conclusions are to be drawn from these. 

Brain Gymnastics and Discipline 

Nevertheless, many useless memories are impressed upon the 
young brains to fade away again, the supporting cells and their 
connections wasting away with them, or they are forced out by 
aggressive new experiences. Are the facts taught the young 



18 

then of no value? In themselves many of them are likely of no 
value. Moreover, a single memory to serve as a representative 
of any one class is sufficient, a fact substantiated when a mind 
sees a number of cats, for example, and yet it could not afterward 
give a distinguishing mark of any one of the cats observed. But 
though the memorized details vanish again, the brain activity in- 
volved serves to expand the young pliable skull and its cavity. 
The same multiplicity of facts aids in forcing inductive judg- 
ments, for the mind begins early to form these, however im- 
aginatively and vaguely. Accordingly, when one set of per- 
ceptive memories fades away the path is made easy for a new set, 
and premature, narrow-minded adultage is prevented ; the process 
of abstraction is ever kept progressive. This manner of brain 
operation described is graphically illustrated by certain writers 
of small fore and aft brain capacity, who on passing from the 
authorship of book to book, must each time acquire a mushroom 
growth of intense perceptive and other memories. These mem- 
ories they let go again after the completion of a work, by indulg- 
ing in the lowest animal propensities. In contrast to these stands 
the genius, a Shakespeare or a Goethe, who can retain a world 
of details and conceptions and who can hold them ever at com- 
mand for a lifetime. A genius never ceases growing. 

Brain Culture and Expansion 

Brain expansibility has been so well established by race his- 
tory, anthropology and by biology and physiology, that I need 
not take up space here to name authorities, American and Euro- 
pean. The brains of the young must be kept active and be pre- 
vented from early settling into that animal routine manifest in 
many waifs of the street who are compelled to govern and confine 
their actions to live. And yet it is folly to stock the intellectual 
region with imaginative stuff, such as fairy tales — goblin and 
fairy tales were not the only things our ancestors knew, not by 
far. Life is too short to forego for a moment a contact with 
reality, with the stuff the earth and life is made of. Besides, 
fantastical indulgence may become a very habit of mind, in the 



19 

manner I have indicated. The good mass of facts acquired must 
be conducive to sound judgments. After the facts are learned 
the youth must learn how to draw judgments from them. The 
hozv to learn is one memory which must become a permanent 
part of brain and mind, it must also possess an associative force. 
It must become a habitual memory that ever puts itself into the 
fore. 

Individuality 

But even after account is taken of the true nature of mind in 
general, it yet remains to take account of individual peculiarities 
and brain-architecture, and for a thorough treatment of that mat- 
ter I must again refer you to my larger ''Brain and Mind Book." 
This book also furnishes a scientific brain topography. You may 
crowd memories upon memories on children in general, and super- 
sede these again by others ere they have taken root, to say nothing 
of having borne fruit, but you may also thus abuse individuals. 
What is good for one is not always good for another; we are 
alike up to a certain point, no further. By attempting to unduly, 
or unintelligentl}', develop a crystallized or defective brain area, 
you waste time and injure the child. Nor is account taken of the 
stimuli and their proper guidance to and through the appropriate 
senses and brain areas. Crazy men have been made sane by a 
systematic training of their senses and brain areas. Would that 
someone raised a hue and cry about the hosts that have been and 
are made insane by chaotic training. But even after an orderly 
proceeding displaces an indiscriminate planting of memories and 
their forced interferences, you still need to be rewarned to guard 
against pulling them up again to make room for others, for so 
again you produce permanent lesions and neuroses and morbid 
psychical affections. You bring about a condition in which fast 
memories are made impossible and emotion, imagination and 
reason become utterly perverted. You make the brain and mind 
too free, a vacillating somewhat which is at the command and 
mercy of the first natural and healthy brain that chooses to 



20 

make use of them. You've made weeping willows of the twigs. 
You produce men lacking will — free men out of free schools with 
a vengeance. 

From the View-Point of Evolution 

Did you ever make a practical application of evolution and 
view the matter from that point? Evolution itself will cast the 
flashlight upon your good and your ghastly work. What was the 
mode of existence of your ancestors? for no living thing or part 
thereof develops and continues to persist except against some ob- 
jective resistance and for use. Their existence was simple — 
simple as the life Charles Wagner pleads for. Wagner is a 
scientist of life, a seer in literature. These ancestors of ours, in- 
dulging in some imagination the while, built up a body, nervous 
system, brain and mind adapted for their simple round of exist- 
ence and for no more. Now if in the present day you go beyond 
that limit you become a transgressor — you are a fool. Your 
will-o-the-wisp of a free all-capacious mind drags you into a 
slough. It is true that by a proper handling of the body and 
brain, by removing friction and rough edges, we can double our 
brain capacity and brain-work ; but even in this scientific proceed- 
ing we can go only so far and no farther. It is in this direction 
that the accomplishments of education are immediate and greatest. 
The finiteness of our nature thus ever confronts us in practice. 
We use the same brains our ancestors did but we stock them with 
a different sort of facts; with different emotional feelings, at 
some points — the "heart" is really located in the brain ; and ac- 
custom them to different and economic modes of motory response. 
The awkwardness of the savage ages him prematurely, physically 
and mentally. The case with the brain is always the same as that 
with the body. You cannot be both doctor and lawyer, to say 
nothing of a third profession, unless you possess an extraordinary 
sized brain and practice an extraordinary brain economy — great 
men always act in simple direct lines and it is for that reason they 
have a simplicity about them which seems incredible to the gaping, 
fussy mediocre multitude bound down to details, a way which is 



21 

presumptuously called practical. So is a monkey's way practical. 
Don't think or talk so off-handedly as to lay this restriction of 
freedom to me. I am only telling you about it and trying to make 
you see that you cannot alter the condition by assertions, or by try- 
ing to demonstrate them away through an assumed majesty of 
mind. Your maxims, old as the hills, restrict your range. You've 
simply not stopped to probe their meaning. Tear yourself away 
from your modern carven images. It is such inner sacrifices that 
prevent murderous revolutions. You will put greater and the 
great love in the place of the smaller loves. The heart pangs will 
not last long nor are they to be succeeded by others. This time 
you are going to build right, for from henceforth you will know 
how to choose. You will see that hundreds of everyday heart- 
pangs, in your heart and in other hearts, are caused by belief and 
persistence in old ignorant ways. It is the memory and dust of 
the great ones of earth, those who were not unduly centered in 
self, that is forever approached tenderly and reverently, save by 
those of the lowest brain-build and calibre. Then do not shirk 
and try to be blind to duty or to shift it elsewhere, if you want 
to make life worth living. Things finite must be done by the 
finite, and things infinite it remains for them to learn and become 
able to do. 

Human Brotherhood 

Freedom of brain and mind, as we have seen, is restricted 
more and more with one's advance in years, save in a few hapless 
altogether characterless persons who never settle down to anything 
particular inwardly except to vacillation, a state of affairs brought 
about in them either prenatally or postnatally. While the wise in 
life retain a considerable freedom of mind, it is true that the 
older an organism becomes, the more it responds as a creature of 
routine. Helpless then we all are, and since there is manifest no 
pity anywhere here on earth save as it comes from the human 
breast alone, limitedly from some brute hearts, — is not this uni- 
versal helplessness sufficient cause to evoke this pity and establish 
brotherly love? And if you see no other reason for being con- 



22 

siderate of automatic, set-minded old age, which sees and does 
and can do nothing more new and other than it does. — you will 
find it in this fact. Recall your experience and maxims of old age 
again and now realize their full meaning and force. Or what 
further plea need I make in behalf of an effective human brother- 
hood than this utilitarian one! Is not human compassion and 
sympathy now a proven necessity? Where now is the room for 
any pride that will bear scrutiny? Know henceforth why and 
wherefore to love your neighbor, a love which is not existent 
unless it seethes associatively through and through the brain. It 
is for the child that you, as adult, are capable of understanding, 
and in so far as you do understand it, feel most deeply and act' 
most emphatically. You feel for and take interest in what you 
pay attention to ; then do not fear that when adults come to know 
their selves and each other in the same comprehensive manner as 
the child is known, that the sensibilities will be taken out of Hfe. 
It will put honor and sentiment into life and that of the most 
sincere kind. The heart and sympathy of the Son of Man was 
what it was because His giant intellect and emotions held the 
world and humanity in its grasp and because His intellect was 
volitionally connected with the emotional and motory regions of 
his brain. 

Thought, Emotion, Will, Action 

You zealously preach and encourage the getting of a detailed 
knowledge of the physical organism and of the lower nervous sys- 
tem, but why stop there ? Why not delve into brains to find the 
ore of life! Why not, if you believe in truth, duty, love, and 
consistency? If this attention were paid to sound brains, there 
would be fewer unsound ones. You ask how with the enforce- 
ment of this strict intellectual economy, you are going to keep the 
pupil busy? or keep yourself busy, from a self-educational point 
of view? Let me ask you what is the use of keeping busy and 
hammering away at a deadened nerve ? But they can be kept busy 
in other than the intellectual regions of their brains ; or in other 
parts of their brains in conjunction with a moderated intellect. 



23 

Smartness does not rest in intellect alone — not at all. Bring 
thought and i^'ork (or play-action j, emotion and will together. 
In that way you will find to your surprise that the capacity of 
mind is really quadruple what you thought it was. Neither your- 
self or pupils will exhaust it. Turn them out into nature and let 
them come in contact with the basal elements of reality. Do not 
try to idealize them. Your, very ideal is false because it is derived 
from non-existent data, or at least only from the narrow data of 
brains. You might as well try to suppress and dig up mother love 
as to try to abolish parts of the brain and sides of mind which the 
very embryological process necessitates and calls into being. You 
can always guide, and now you are on the way to realizing zi^hat 
and hozi'. After you have done with the intellect, two-thirds of 
the brain still lies before you unattended to, two-thirds whose 
existence you have heretofore probably not suspected, or have 
stubbornly denied in doing as the Romans do. 

Neglected Grand Brain Areas 

These remaining divisions of the brain constitute the vital, 
motory, emotional, spiritual — will being considered as a tonicity 
of brain activity. The lines are, of course, nowhere sharply 
drawn; all areas are, for instance, more or less emotional. Do 
not leave the dififerent areas to the care of specialists. Specialism 
is subject to perverted views and practices. Specialism takes the 
life out of things. There are no educators who can do the work 
so thoroughly and roundly as can the secular, and besides they 
have the child in their control five days out of seven; but they 
must do their work eclectically, whole-mindedly. They must 
inculcate and associate memories. Isolated, unnaturally detached 
memories are unreined memories — I am speaking of areal mem- 
ories now — and tend to create the irrational mischief and the 
detrimental conduct of life ; they create criminals of all sorts. It 
is true that the forebrain is the pride of man, but I have shown 
you that a dissociated intellect is naught but an abstract entity 
and, moreover, perverse ; and a perversely operating intellect is 
negative, satanic. Likewise also take note that the rest of the 



24 <, 

brain of man is expanded far beyond the fixed homogeneous 
sections of the brute brains. 

Let not the physiological investigators labor in vain in the 
interest of human self-preservation. Because of a hitherto lack 
of knowledge of a better way to proceed, they have at times 
made shocking experiments, but if application were made of the 
knowledge thus gained, what emancipation from suffering and 
cruelty would the organic world not have undergone as a recom- 
pense for the several brute immolations. In short, the quickest 
way to stop vivisection is to make an associative practical use of 
the discoveries and verifications it makes. The sane intelligent 
measure would do away with much sickness and surgical work. 

Therefore study the nervous system and brain, even if you 
must forego numbers, grammar and such things for a time — you 
will have less trouble with them afterward — to verify your old 
psychologies by them. Make the psychologies supplementary and 
analyze them as you would other myths. You will not reduce life 
to dryness b}^ robbing it of imagination ; nature has still greater 
things to keep your imagination and heart throbbing while these 
remain elastic, and I've shown you how to keep them elastic. At- 
tend to brains and body — your own first, that you may under- 
stand others better — and you will be able to keep the pupil busy ; 
you will relieve him from the misery and disease which results 
from cerebral repression; you will save him from the misery and 
disease which results from cerebral oppression; you will go far- 
ther than you could in any other way to remove that slavery 
against which Fenelon raised the cry : *'No liberty, no enjoyment, 
but always lessons, silence, uncomfortable postures, corrections, 
threats." By stocking the child's brain with the right sort of 
memories, you will turn brute inclinations into human virtues in- 
dependently of intellectual control, for by this time you must have 
discovered that after you have rid yourself of the idea of an 
absolute free mind, you have also to rid yourself of the idea that 
intellect is all there is to mind. Thus you will truly educate — and 
never in all time will anybody with just reason be able to accuse 
and reproach you. You forsake tragedy for harmony. 



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